Computer applications, websites, or other electronic content including offers for products and services generally require a user to explicitly select and/or interact with one or more portions of the content being presented to generate a conversion (e.g., completion a sale or purchase, submission of information to a content provider, causing delivery of additional information to the user or any other pre-defined response for the content). For example, an advertisement for a product or service can require the user to select the advertisement content and navigate to the online store offering the product for sale. At the online store, the user can then enter information to purchase or obtain additional information regarding the product or service.
In many types of electronic content maintained by (primary) content providers, invitational content (i.e., the portions of the content offering products and services) are generally provided by other (secondary) content providers. The combination of content from the primary content providers and invitational content from the secondary content providers may be done directly by the primary content providers or via an agent. Accordingly, the invitational content in these portions varies over time, depending on the various arrangements between the primary content provider and the various secondary content providers. For example, each of the secondary content providers may arrange for a number of impressions of their invitational content. Further, secondary content providers may also arrange to have their invitational content associated only with a particular context.
Secondary content providers typically select the primary content providers for their invitational content using a number of different approaches. For example, secondary content provider may select primary content providers which are known to be associated with content similar or related to their invitational content. Alternatively, secondary content providers can select primary content providers that are known to be associated with the target audience for the invitational content. Absent such knowledge, secondary content providers typically rely on random targeting.